SYNOPSIS: The global economy is in crisis. More and more businesses are outsourcing their manufacturing. And former industrial towns-- whether they’re in Ohio, Mississippi, or Poland-- are left asking the question, ‘What comes after the factory?’ For questions like this, the best answers come from the people who have been there.

Detroit, Michigan has been running on fumes since the fall of the auto industry and Poland’s textile industry in Lodz has been hanging by a thread since the fall of communism. In both cities, their populations have fled, their unemployment has spiked, and now, they’re both on the front lines of re-building their economies.

After the Factory presents an opportunity to learn from these two diametrically different cultures as their entire way of life transitions to something new. Stories from the citizens are inspiring. Ideas from community leaders are thought-provoking. Free-thinking entrepreneurs are putting a new spin on traditional concepts of growth.

Change is inevitable. And as the people in each city propel Detroit and Lodz into the future, this trans-continental dialogue allows communities worldwide to see how these fallen giants, troubled as they are, just might be the innovators writing the new rulebook for next generation cities.

SYNOPSIS: Alagados (Sim, N?o Mau Conduto) documents a fascinating Brazilian community of dazzling energy and overwhelming poverty and violence through the eyes of 23-year old Renato. Born into a society that marginalizes him and his peers, Renato is a striking ex-criminal who chooses to defy the stereotype and engage in the active development of his own identity as a father, a worker, and a musician. Drawn to the rhythms of an Afro-Brazilian percussion drumming group, Renato is offered an opportunity he could only have dreamed of and struggles to overcome the odds in order to make new choices for his future.www.alagados.com

CHARITY: The Alagados Projectwww.alagadosproject.org
The Alagados Project gives scholarships to first generation college students from the community of Alagados so that they get the education that they need to be able to design their own exit strategies from poverty and become leaders that can affect significant social change in their communities.

SYNOPSIS: While at her desk one morning, working for a large, prestigious company in downtown Los Angeles, designer Rose Tourje was startled by the sound of demolition. She soon realized that this noise was the result of office furniture being hurled out a 5-story window as it hit the concrete below. To her astonishment, Rose discovered that this careless wasting of usable furniture was the common practice in the industry she had dedicated her life to. Soon after this incident in 2005, Rose quit her well-paying job to change the practice of how furniture and carpet were discarded; she formed the non-profit ANEW, with the tag line, “doing what's right with what's left.”

ANEW not only keeps furniture and carpet out of America's overflowing landfills, but directs those needed items to organizations and non-profits around the world. Now with the backing of industry leaders in architecture, real-estate, design and building, ANEW has forged a new path of social sustainability®=
environmental sustainability + social responsibility.

SYNOPSIS: One moment David Parke is enjoying the beauty and rush of a mountain bike ride and the next he's motionless, confined to a hospital bed. Bent Out of Shape shares his inspirational story as he fights to get back on his feet after a spinal cord injury.

SYNOPSIS: What if you could harness the power of the free market to solve the problems of poverty, hunger, and inequality? To some, it sounds impossible. But Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus is doing exactly that. BONSAI PEOPLE celebrates Yunus’ extraordinary humanitarian work, which started by lending $27 to 42 people out of his own pocket and has now grown to helping 1 out of every 1,000 people on Earth. Yunus has created a mirror image of conventional banking—loan small not big, loan to women not men, loan rural not urban, loan to the poor not the rich. But he didn’t stop there. Whenever he sees a problem he starts a business, in a mix between business and social work, which he terms “social business.” Yunus tackles some of the world’s most vexing problems from healthcare to education to alternative energy and demonstrates to the world that complex problems sometimes do have simple solutions. A free market with a social conscience—
Microcredit is just the tip of the iceberg!http://bonsaimovie.com/

SYNOPSIS: Produced by the innovative non-profit organization, everyday gandhis, THE FIGHT TO FORGIVE follows a group of former child soldiers for five years of life after Liberia’s brutal civil war. Having traded their weapons for cameras and soccer balls, the ex-combatants return to their communities as grassroots peacebuilders after years of trauma and isolation. Because of the unusually close relationship between the filmmakers, these ex-combatants and their former commander, the film offers viewers an intimate lens through which to explore broader issues of children in conflict, innovative ex-combatant reintegration, the deep connection between environmental restoration and peace among humans, and the role of traditional culture in peacebuilding. By United Nations estimates, 300,000 child soldiers are active worldwide. One can’t help but wonder what hidden gifts of peacemaking lie in the hearts of the tens of thousands of ex-combatants like the boys featured in the film.www.thefighttoforgive.com

everyday gandhis' seeks to educate and inspire the public, supporting peace through sharing stories and experiences that illustrate fresh thinking, respect for traditional culture, restoration of nature, innovative media, and the importance of community storytelling.

We hold councils in US and West Africa to share stories, dreams, divinations, projects and challenges.

We create documentary films, still photographs, written media, web media, and cultural performances.

We offer training institutes in West Africa in peace building, reconciliation, dreaming, traditional healing, video and still photography.

We participate in workshops, presentations, and community events in the US and West Africa.

SYNOPSIS: By late 1944, World War II appeared to be nearing its bloody end. In the East, the Soviet Army had pushed the Nazi war machine back toward Germany’s borders, while from the West, the US and British armies were advancing toward the Rhine. But even as the war’s outcome became clearer, the Nazis continued to carry out their effort to exterminate the Jews of Europe.

As the Nazis liquidated the extermination camps in the East, they forced tens of thousands of Jewish prisoners westward on death marches. Transports arrived at the Buchenwald concentration camp from Auschwitz in the winter of 1944/45. Unknown thousands of prisoners died on the way.

Upon seeing this influx of new prisoners, the Communist-led underground at Buchenwald, which administered the camp on a day-to-day basis, made a conscious decision to protect the youths who were among the newest inmates. They established a children’s block, barrack 66, led by Antonin Kalina, a Czech Communist and his deputy, Gustav Schiller, a Polish Jew. The barrack was situated far away from the camp’s main gate and far from the gaze of the Nazi SS. The underground strove until the last days of the war and beyond to keep the youths alive.

On April 11, 1945, Buchenwald was liberated. Nearly 1,000 boys survived. On April 11, 2010, sixty-five years later, several of the surviving boys from block 66 returned to Weimar and to Buchenwald. This is their story.

SYNOPSIS: In Roadmap to Apartheid, first-time directors Ana Nogueira and Eron Davidson take a close look at the apartheid analogy commonly used to describe the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Narrated by Alice Walker (author of The Color Purple), the film traces the rise and fall of apartheid in South Africa, as it shows why many Palestinians feel they are living in an apartheid system today, and why an increasing number of people around the world agree with them.

SYNOPSIS: Rock the Boat is a fun, fast-paced documentary about the Los Angeles River and the challenges society faces in providing clean water to urban populations (think Huckleberry Finn meets Chinatown). When satirical writer and avid kayaker George Wolfe organizes a boating trip to demand public access to the river, he and his motley crew become entangled in a national controversy surrounding the river’s “navigability” and consequent eligibility for Clean Water Act protection. With breathtaking images of the LA River, insightful interviews and a soft spot for humor, the film is a bright alternative to the current spate of doomsday documentaries.

SYNOPSIS: A documentary film that follows a team of actors, playwrights, and activists who use theater to help Ugandan teens share their story of resilience after being abducted and forced to become child soldiers and sex slaves in northern Uganda. The film captures the incredible humanity and emotion between the children and adults as they work together to construct dramatic theater performances based on their lives. Staging Hope is an authentic feature length documentary with personal accounts, live performances, music, and dance. It gives us a strong glimpse into the vulnerable moments and powerful bonds that connect all of us as humans, no matter where we live or what we have gone through.

CHARITY: Voices In Harmonyhttp://www.voicesinharmonycom/Voices in Harmony is a youth arts organization committed to empowering the voices and visions of at-risk teens. Our programs cultivate personal, academic, and artistic excellence. Staging Hope is a project of Voices in Harmony.

SYNOPSIS: On a daily basis, our bodies are being exposed to thousands of chemicals; 80,000 of those are in our system of commerce, many of which carry no details on human, animal or environmental safety. There is no level of understanding as to what they are doing to our bodies alone, buy when combined through our food, water and "lifestyle" products, concerns begin to mount. There is not one research facility on this planet that can tell us what any of these different chemicals do in tandem, which is of course a reason for tremendous concern. So, we now find that it is our duty to discover what is actually happening and if possible, determine where we go from here.

As we're pouring billions of dollars into research, cures, testing, pharmaceutical drugs and agencies to combat disease, the concept that is qualified is treatment. We are attempting to provide one of prevention. This film is not designed to provide a demonstrative answer to cure all disease, but rather clear enough proof that by taking a precautionary approach to what we are putting into our bodies, we will inherently cut our exposure risks dramatically and thusly we can live healthier lives without the high price tag.

We want this film to act as a springboard. As the universities and organizations associated with this issue gain further exposure, they provide a great deal of content that we will use in our online database for people to seek acceptable solutions.

SYNOPSIS: The commercial sexual exploitation of children is one of the worst forms of child abuse in the U.S. It traps children of all backgrounds in an endless cycle of violence. Despite their abuse, victims are frequently arrested and prosecuted as juvenile offenders. In this documentary we meet Katrina, whose childhood abruptly ends when she is manipulated and sold for sex by a trafficker. Her compelling story proves that with understanding and support, victims can become survivors. Experts, from juvenile justice, law enforcement, and service providers, explain the trauma these youth endure. They also share examples of approaches that shift our response from punitive to restorative. The first step is to see survivors in terms of their humanity, value and potential, and not their past.

ECPAT (Ending Child Prostitution and Trafficking) is a network of organizations and individuals working together to eliminate the commercial sexual exploitation of children around the world. Our mission is to ensure that children everywhere enjoy their fundamental rights, free from all forms of commercial sexual exploitation. ECPAT-USA has three main goals: 1) To make the United States a country where every child is free from sexual exploitation; 2) To prevent children from being trafficked to the United States for sexual exploitation; 3) To prevent Americans from being able to go abroad to have sex with minors.

SYNOPSIS: when you find me tells the story of two sisters whose childhood bond is tested by a tragedy they are too young to understand. Alternating between past and present, when you find me is an emotional fable of two people coping with loss in very different ways, and what it takes to find peace within yourself and reconciliation with the ones you love.

SYNOPSIS: In the East African region ten times more people have albinism than in North America and Europe. In Tanzania and parts of East Africa certain corrupt healers traffic in the body parts of persons with albinism (PWA). They sell them for magical potions and amulets to anyone who will dare to use them and prey upon deep-seated and long-standing prejudices and superstitions.

Vicky Ntetema, former BBC Tanzania Bureau Chief, investigates the murders of PWA sweeping the country. She takes us into the lives of those terrorized by this scourge and we experience through their own eyes their fear and their courage.

SYNOPSIS: Why Should I Care? is a documentary about the 2011 Egyptian Revolution. The question of why American youth should care about the revolution is outlined through the exploration of several topics. The film explores the causes and effects of the revolution and how it has influenced the world. Through interviews with religious leaders, professors, and political figures this documentary gives an insight into the reasons and the outcomes of the revolution. It culminates in a conclusion discussing how Americans, the youth in particular, are affected and why it is important for the youth to be educated about the revolution.

Clergy Beyond Borders (CBB) is dedicated to an active religious pluralism that goes beyond mere tolerance for difference. The basic premise of CBB’s work is the conviction that all religions contain a message of commitment to improving the world, and that too often the differences rather than the commonalities become the subject for discussion. CBB promotes mutual recognition among religious communities, seeking not to remove meaningful borders between them, but rather building bridges of understanding and cooperation.